UN Secretary-General António Guterres is calling for concerted global action to quash the “tsunami” of hate speech that has risen alongside the COVID-19 pandemic.
World leaders at the G-20 virtual summit held on Thursday committed to inject over $5 trillion into the global economy to counteract the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The former Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, who has died aged 100, was responsible for a series of diplomatic breakthroughs that were “perhaps without parallel, in the history of the UN.”
That’s according to his most senior aide, Chef de Cabinet Virendra Dayal, in an interview on Thursday by phone from his home in Delhi. Mr. Dayal praised the “inherent decency and integrity” of the former UN chief, who served two terms that saw the end of the Cold War, telling UN News’s Matt Wells that Mr. Pérez de Cuéllar played a key role in the transition, “in an absolutely masterly manner.”
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As global leaders prepare to convene in New York next week to debate the best way forward for the planet, Secretary-General António Guterres is urging them to “do what is necessary” to ensure that “we are able to solve the dramatic problems we face.”
Remembering the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, the UN chief has called on everyone around the world to “stand together against the normalization of hate”.
